Kyle Wagner

Samsung's new Series 5 Ultra laptop doesn't look like anything special. But that's the whole point—it's for people not looking for anything too out of the ordinary, in terms of both specs and price.

The Series 5 Ultra is pretty much the same computer as the existing Series 5—just now with a touch panel. It seems strange that Samsung opted to give its mid-tier laptop touch powers instead of its flagship Series 9. But it could make sense to just get regular people used to using touchscreens with the regular old computers they buy.

The Series 5 has a 1366x768 display, 10-point capacitive touch, i3 and i5 Ivy Bridge processors, and 4GB of RAM. It has a 500GB HDD, with a 24GB SSD ExpressCache. The laptop weighs 3.83 pounds, which isn't too much heavier than the 3.35 of the old Series 5.

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Why isn't this in the totally gorgeous Series 9? Cost, and thinness. The Series 9 was already so thin that it had to sacrifice some of the keyboard travel distance that made the first version so good; adding the thickness and weight of a touchscreen—not to mention the cost to an already-expensive machine—would have been too much, at least for now.

The Series 5 Ultra will cost between $800 and $850 in its two configurations.